Duty
by darkcyan
Summary: [One Shot] [In-game] As the rest of the group enters the Farplane, Auron indulges in some introspection of his own.


Auron POV set in Guadosalam the first time you're there, so no spoilers for direct plot events that happen afterwards. However, Auron being Auron, he knows things that don't come clear until later, so I'll say across-the-board X spoilers to be safe. As far as I know, nothing to do with X-2, however.

The good news is that I own a copy of Final Fantasy X. I've played it all the way through at least twice, and bits of it many more times than that. The bad news is that, no matter how much I love the game, it still belongs to Square Enix, not to me. And if anyone doesn't know the source of the poetic reference, it's from the poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", by Robert Frost. It doesn't belong to me either.

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**Duty**

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"I do not belong there."

I eye the portal out of the corner of my eye, dread and longing coiling like twin snakes within my heart. It had been my instinctive response, before I had a chance to begin making up more believable excuses. Truth, and yet falsehood.

I belong on the Farplane. That is a truth – where else do dead spirits belong, but on the Farplane or lost to their anger and sorrow, trapped as fiends?

I do not belong on the Farplane. Oddly, also truth – for once I touch the Farplane, there will be no going back. I will be absorbed like every other soul; absorbed as I should have been ten years ago. And that is something I cannot yet risk.

I _must_ see Tidus and Yuna safely to Zanarkand. I have done what I can to influence the outcome of that meeting, but in the end it must be their choice – her choice – and their choice alone.

I wonder sometimes if they truly thought I didn't see them, together, during that sunset on the Mi'ihen Highroad. More likely they assumed I didn't care. Truth? – it would be hard for me to care more. I did not interrupt because it seemed that they were doing exactly as I hoped, even without me subtly pushing.

Dragging Tidus with me to summarily join Yuna's ranks as a guardian was not exactly my best work. The only reason it worked is because the source of the problem was me – he _wanted_ to be Yuna's guardian; he just wasn't that fond of me pushing him around. Not terribly surprising ... Jecht was always horrifically stubborn as well and, as much as he hates to admit it, Tidus really is rather a lot like his 'old man'.

I didn't know Yuna, at first. I knew Braska, about as well as one can, so I was able to project a certain number of assumed characteristics on her. But I didn't know until I met her just how accurate those predictions would (or wouldn't) be. Tidus, on the other hand, I knew almost as well as Braska. Perhaps, in some ways, even better – I practically watched him grow up, after all; even influenced him during those years, just a little.

I told him about Sin straight-off because, no matter how things fall out, we can't afford to allow him to have a sudden crisis of conscience because some undead bitch decides to drop the bombshell – or the enormous mass of pyreflies that inhabit her lair decide to pick up a few of the wrong memories and do it for her. Mine, for example. Yuna, on the other hand, I'm content to let lie for the moment – a crisis of conscience might be just the thing to shock her into thinking clearly. It can't be allowed to go on for too long, of course ... but I get the feeling that Tidus will take care of that.

I attempt to eye the Al Bhed girl discreetly; it doesn't work too well when I'm also keeping a close watch on the Farplane. (For those thinking it sounds like I'm afraid the Farplane will jump out and grab me if I don't watch it religiously; all I can say is that stranger things have happened. And I can't afford for it to happen, not here, not now.)

The Al Bhed, Rikku … now she was an unexpected windfall. I gave her a hard time at first, of course. It would be expected of me, to give an Al Bhed who had the audacity to try and join the pilgrimage a hard time, and I cannot afford to let any of them suspect that I am anything but The Legendary Sir Auron, former guardian of High Summoner Braska, and proponent of all that is good and Yevon; staunch supporter of the pilgrimage in the face of ... anything. Everything.

(Of course, as far as I'm concerned, 'good' and 'Yevon' are pretty near oxymoronic; I've probably let a bit much of that ill will spill to Tidus, but perhaps that's for the best – there are certain things he needs to not realize for a while yet, so as to increase the shock value, but it will be useful for him to realize ahead of time that Yevon is not all good.)

So the Al Bhed will do what I wish, but can't afford to do: worry visibly and vocally about the summoner and do her best to convince Yuna to find another way. I don't have any expectation that she'll actually succeed: Braska's stubborn streak, at least a couple miles wide, that girl has. And if_ I_ couldn't convince Braska to turn back … well. Rikku really doesn't have a chance. But at least she'll be a constant reminder that another way exists if Yuna ever wants to take it.

And Tidus will tie her to this world, to life. Already, they're bonding … I hope, by the time we reach Zanarkand, the bond will have become so strong that she will do anything to protect him – perhaps she won't stop to save her own life; but it is my hope that she will have second thoughts when the choice comes down to 'Tidus' life as well. Romance holds many tales of lovers going down in flames together, but Yuna's not that sort of girl. She wouldn't – won't – see anything glorious in the death of people she loves.

I remember your old saw well, Yunalesca. Strong bonds … Yuna is friends with us all, but I know, and she will know, and you will know, that for a truly powerful bond, it couldn't possibly be anyone but Tidus. And if Tidus becomes that important to her …

This marriage offer of Seymour's. I have understandably mixed feelings about it.

On the one hand, it's yet another chance to find something that will tie Yuna to life. Would a husband at her side when she goes to meet Yunalesca prove her less willing to sacrifice herself to the cause, much less him? Would the bonds of a duty holding her here keep her from following her perceived duty to death?

On the other hand … I'll admit it, I'm prejudiced. Seymour is a maester of Yevon and, although I was once a warrior monk in their order, I have seen little good come of Yevon since. Myself, all but cast out because I refused the hand of a woman I wouldn't recognize on a crowded street; Braska, marked as 'fallen' for having the audacity to wed an Al Bhed – and that was certainly the happiest marriage I'd seen, for all its premature and unhappy ending. The stunt Kinoc and Seymour pulled at Operation Mi'ihen …

Yevon makes me sick. The thought of Braska's baby daughter wed to a _maester_, no less – and the two of them knowing each other little more than I knew … was her name Elise? Alicia? I don't remember anymore, nor do I really care, if it comes down to that. That thought makes me sick … but what can I do, if that's the choice she makes? Personal matters … it is a summoner's privilege to decide them; and no matter how little faith I have in Yevon anymore, there are still some things even I hold sacred.

More ominously, this marriage, it would drive an insurmountable wedge between Yuna and Tidus. With her husband a stranger, Tidus forced farther away … what would she have left to hold her here? Her friends? I think it has already been sufficiently proven that she is more than willing to sacrifice their feelings at the altar of this fool quest.

There's also something … _else_ about Seymour. It's beyond him being a maester; has nothing to do with the fact that he's half-Guado, half-human. Just something about him – perhaps the way he harped on Lady Yunalesca, though he couldn't know the full story; more likely his obvious hints of himself as an ideal Lord Zaon.

Lord Zaon sacrificed himself to become Yunalesca's Final Aeon.

I find myself wondering how much Seymour knows. Perhaps he chose that couple as an example of enduring love – with the added fillip of the parallel between Yuna and Yunalesca; perhaps I have nothing more to worry about than an overeager maester with an annoying crush.

Yet I find myself considering – how much _does_ he know? What's his true intention? Because if he _does _know the full story, he is further damned in my eyes – for knowing the truth and yet letting this travesty of justice, of Yunalesca's so-called 'hope' continue to eat the lives of countless summoners.

And if he knows the full story, he is dangerous … if he is taking the actions he has while knowing the full story, he can only be aiming to become Yuna's Final Aeon, to become Sin. A Sin fully in agreement with its purpose in life; the carnage from such a being would be monstrous. Unthinkable. Whatever else happens, _that_ cannot. I'm not sure Spira would survive.

Yet my course is set. As a former warrior monk, the elite of Yevon; as the person I have carefully cultivated myself to seem these past ten years, the person that perhaps I actually once was, I _cannot_ be visibly opposed to this marriage, no matter if my soul cries out against it. I must place my trust in Yuna and in Tidus, that this situation will resolve itself properly.

Aware that I have become caught up in my inner musings to the detriment of outer vigilance, I return my gaze to the portal to the Farplane. It would be so easy … just to walk in there and never come back out. To rejoin Braska, to wait there for Jecht to come as he would in time, as I meant to do ten years ago, before I remembered duty and it bound me to this world.

It is duty now that once again forces my thoughts aside. I will reach the Farplane someday, of that I am sure. Until then, there is work I must do; preparations I must make. I cannot afford to walk away now, not when I might hold in my hands the solution to killing Sin – permanently.

Not when I still have my oath to Jecht, to watch over his son; and the second, personal oath – to train him up properly, to see him back to Spira; to set Jecht to rest as well. When I have sworn to myself to watch over Yuna as well, for together I truly believe they hold the key.

Yes, there are things I must do before I can allow myself to rest; and once I enter the Farplane I will no longer have the strength – or the will, or the heart – to return. _That_ is the truth. It is not my time to enter the Farplane because I will not allow it to be. I do not belong there because I cannot allow myself to.

"And miles to go before I sleep." I murmur, reflecting that, while I had little use for poetry as a whole, occasionally, it got a little something right.

Rikku, across the stairwell from me, caught in her own musings, looks up. "Hmm?" She is holding a red ball, about the size of her fist; I distantly recall her having tossed it while we sat in silence, each consumed by our own thoughts. It would fit what I know of her, being unable to sit still. "Did you say something?"

I wonder what her story is; why she doesn't enter the Farplane. I have known Al Bhed to enter the Farplane before, ideological issues aside, so her reason is just as mine was – an excuse. I wonder what deeper reason there is; who she lost, perhaps, that she can't bear to see again; or perhaps who she is afraid of seeing there. But I also know it is none of my business.

"Nothing." I reply.

_But I have promises to keep,  
And miles to go before I sleep,  
And miles to go before I sleep._

30 March 2005


End file.
